A new beginning

Kurdistan referendum Amgad Rasmi, Asharq Al-Awsat

President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s visit to the United Arab Emirates and the start of the new school year were the two most covered news items in the Egyptian press this week.

The privately owned daily Al-Masry Al-Yom quoted the president as saying that “the Gulf’s security is part and parcel of our security”, while Al-Watan, another private daily, quoted the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Rashed as saying, to Al-Sisi, “We support you against terrorism.”

The editorial of the daily Al-Ahram, for its part, underlined the two countries’ strategic partnership, concluding that bilateral cooperation will benefit the entire Arab region.

Marking the start of the new school year on Sunday, the private Al-Yom Al-Sabei ran a special file highlighting the lack of a playground in some state schools and raising such issues as Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated teachers and school meals.

Al-Watan too ran a file but on private tuition centres. It cast light on the role of the school, educational reform and teacher salaries.

In his regular Al-Ahram column, Usama Al-Gahazaly Harb mentioned how that newspapers reported the return of 22 million students to school, noting that the figure is a burden on the state and tackling the same pressing issues of teacher conditions, reform and private tuition.

The Kurdistan referendum that started on Sunday was cause for concern in most of the newspapers this week. Some pointed up the risk of a divided Iraq on their front pages, others ran analytical pieces on its impact of the referendum.

Emad Gad insisted that rule of law is the way out in his column in Al-Watan. He explained that what is going on in northern Iraq is the logical result of the absence of justice, equality and citizenship. "This happened in south Sudan,” he wrote, “and it is happening today in northern Iraq. The rest is yet to come unless we work to build lawful states...”

Figures in the news: More than 100 million mobile users

There were 100.3 million subscribers to mobile phones in Egypt this June according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistices (CAPMAS) in a report issued this month. The number of users in June 2016 was 96.2 million.